Posts by Joe Wylie
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Up Front: Stand for... Something, in reply to BenWilson,
The Americans are mostly just puzzled and spend the whole conversation trying to talk the country up, as if I were somehow suffering from a lack of national self-esteem. The Australians think NZers are humble because they got humbled by Ozzie…
And by way of a small footnote, many Americans have long been puzzled as to why Rupert Murdoch is generally loathed in his country of origin, rather than being a source of pride for his global success.
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Access: Disability as a wicked policy problem, in reply to A S,
From my perspective, this has nothing to do with sacking old ladies, it has everything to do with changing ways of thinking and fundamentally shifting how government designs and delivers services to the public.
I don't disagree with any of that. Given the present political ascendancy, I can't see how that can be achieved by the currently favoured methods. I'm not an unreserved fan of Helen Clark's record, the Urewera raids and her exploitation of Ahmed Zhaoui's case killed her chances of sainthood as far as I'm concerned. But she did carry through on the principles that gained her the trust of the electorate back when she was Health Minister in the 80s.
Under Shipley, nurses could barely repay their student loans. Under Clark they were once again able to do so. Right now there are people who enjoy powerful connections who see that as a waste of money that could be diverted to a few deserving consultants. Any smell of 'reform' anywhere in the health sector will excite some very unpleasant vested interests.
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Access: Disability as a wicked policy problem, in reply to A S,
Things need to change. A lot. Across a whole bunch of areas . . . But only if it is done well.
Given the self-interested manner in which ‘reforms’ have been cyclically carried out since the 80s, I really doubt that there’s a model for that. In the 80s, when inefficient civil service organisations were converted to SOEs, the survivors of downsizing as often as not were the predatory office politicians, rather than those with the core skills.
Back then, at least the survivors got treated to ‘training’ videos, where they were encouraged to laugh at comic depictions of how they used to do things. These often starred John Cleese, who did rather nicely out of the ‘restructuring’ mania of those times. From my humble experience of the past decade, the method has been reduced to bringing in comfortably remunerated consultants to pick people off one by one in individual ‘meetings’.
At a certain tertiary education institution one of these ‘consultants’ happily declared that he was initially out for “grey-haired old ladies”, who could easily be leant on to take early retirement. Strangely enough, the ranks of silverback males didn’t appear to suffer a corresponding thinning-out.
The fifth point that Hilary has quoted above, with its sinister ‘no pain, no gain’ ethos, seems straight out of that mindset. There will be sacrificial losers, and any savings gained will accrue to the winners, not those who were once served by the organisation being effectively asset-stripped under the guise of ‘reform’.
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OnPoint: Beyond 'a bad look', in reply to Marc C,
...there has never been a further investigation into what really went on at ACC...I have a very bad feeling about the media these days, I simply have very little trust in the media as we have it now, it is certainly not doing the job it is meant to be doing as the traditional “fourth estate”.
These days we're sometimes better off treating editorial cartoons as infographics than we are relying on journalists.
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to BenWilson,
My money is on the last option.
Speculating on the next move of a low-level climate troll? In Colombia they've taken it a few clicks up the evolutionary ladder.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Alfie,
Garrick Tremain again
It's probably close to 20 years since Tremain drew Jim Bolger leading a hospital patient by a ring through his nose towards a "debate" on NZ becoming a republic, with the caption "I think you'll find this interesting". Plus ca change.
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OnPoint: Beyond 'a bad look', in reply to Rob Stowell,
Great post and discussion – thanks Keith. Thanks PAS :)
+1
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OnPoint: Beyond 'a bad look', in reply to Tinakori,
witness Gordon Campbell’s continual petitions for sainthood for Jim Anderton.
???
Got a link? Just one example would be fine. -
Hard News: Synthetic cannabis: it just…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
These people
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Seriously, what does this kind of dehumanising drivel serve beyond big-noting your own sense of moral superiority? -
Hard News: #GE2015: Proper Mad, in reply to Rich Lock,
Riddle me this: If ‘The Media’ is the problem, how has Labour, or any other left-leaning party, ever managed to win an election, ever?
In New South Wales, where Rupert Murdoch’s power is such that State Governments effectively govern via the Daily Telegraph, State Labor last attained power by making a pre-election deal to transfer a greater slab of public assets to the Dirty Digger than the Liberal incumbents of the time were willing to do.
Paul Keating hoped that his efforts to expedite the sleazy deal might ensure him a further Federal term, but Murdoch as always drove a hard bargain.